According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, an estimated 41.5 million people played some form of fantasy sports game in 2014, up from 35.9 million in 2013. With those kinds of numbers and shows such as "The League" gaining traction in popular culture, it is pretty clear that fantasy sports are here to stay. People are competitive by nature, and fantasy sports allow many people to "compete" without gambling on sports, which is still illegal in most states.

That desire and natural affinity for competition is what has led Ambition, a startup company founded by fourUniversity of Tennessee graduates, to take the idea of fantasy sports and apply it to the world of sales and marketing.

"It makes sales more fun and gives companies real-time data on their sales team that no other company can currently offer," Brian Trautschold, one of the founders of the company, said.

Ambition's software gives companies the ability to divide the sales staff into different "teams" that compete against each other through metrics like calls made, emails, leads generated, profit, etc. Now, the company is rolling out version 2.0 of the platform with even more capabilities.

"We kind of see the product as the 'Fan Duel' for the workforce," Trautschold explained. "The new version looks much better on tablets and phones and has far more graphics. It has new sections like 'highlights' that point out big moments that may have happened during the week."

The new interface makes the sales platform even more engaging and fantasy game like than ever before. Sales representatives can now challenge each other in fantasy football type week-long matchups and even have the ability to "smack talk" back and forth. The screenshot below shows a comparison screen when two reps are squaring off.

In addition to reps being able to challenge each other, sales managers now have the ability to customize sales games quickly and easily. Anyone that has worked in sales has experienced the games that managers play to incentivize employees. Often, these games are hard to keep track of and can be a tedious chore. Now, Ambition makes it all easy with games being able to be set up in a matter of minutes.

Ambition 2.0 also provides dynamic, real-time insights that show how each sales representative is doing. Managers can go in for each employee and set "weights" to determine what metrics are the most important (i.e. emails sent, deals closed, profit, etc.).

Ambition's algorithm will then assign an 'Ambition' score to that employee. Think of this as a sales version of the QBR (Quarterback Rating). With this innovative idea, employees are now scored holistically, meaning a manager will be able to tell that while an employee may not have a hit the targeted number of calls, he or she was still able to close a big deal.

"What Ambition is trying to do is to provide automatic reporting while creating more coaching opportunities," Trautschold said. "It lets managers know when salespeople are or are not machining calls or not providing the right kind of customer service."

Trautschold and his team pride themselves on taking the gamification of the marketplace to a level that has not been replicated. They have put together a star-studded insight and engineering team, highlighted by Rob deCarvalho, a former NASA Technologist with Ph.D from Harvard in Atomic Physics.

He's been instrumental in developing the algorithms, programming, etc. that have gone into the new version of Ambition and really helped create a product that is both fun and sophisticated. Ambition 2.0 will roll out in January to existing customers, and all new Ambition clients will be able to use the new interface.

"We see our product making a real impact on businesses, and that's what's exciting for us," Trautschold said.

Preston McClellan is a marketing coordinator at Navigate Research in Chicago and a contributor for Sporting News, writing about sports business. Connect with him on Twitter at @p_mcclellan and join the dialogue.